The parents of children attending George Washington Elementary School in Baltimore were understandably outraged when they learned last month that someone at the school had altered thousands of answers on students’ 2008 state math and reading tests to raise their scores. Following a lengthy investigation, state education officials did exactly the right thing. They revoked the principal’s state teaching license and made clear that educators elsewhere could expect the same if they tampered with test results.
Most educators across the country administer these tests honestly and in good faith. But as The Times’s Trip Gabriel reported last week, cases of test-tampering have recently turned up in at least a half-dozen states. The problem seems to be spreading since states began to evaluate teachers based at least in part on how well they improve student performance.
In Georgia, state officials are looking into suspicious test results at nearly 200 schools. The inquiry was triggered when computer analyses showed that someone at each of the schools had erased an inordinately large number of incorrect student answers and penciled in correct ones.
Groups that dislike standardized tests — and teacher accountability systems based on the